Creative New Zealand

BACKBONE kicks off a season of solos at Vunilagi Vou x East Tāmaki

As we approach our 4th anniversary, remembering every anniversary has in fact been within the Covid-19 pandemic and aftermath, it’s a pleasure to present the 2023 programme for Vunilagi Vou x East Tāmaki.

This fourth site of Vunilagi Vou, officially opened in August 2022, has been a flexible, evolving space. It has taken time to work out how to operate here and what this gallery space needs… it has taken time to recalibrate after a period of spacelessness in early 2022, and it has taken time to find resource from contestable funding programmes. There have been some hits, some misses, but each time, the needle has shifted again on what is possible here.

In late 2022, a grant was secured from Creative New Zealand to research and develop a solo exhibition – my own! It was the first time I have applied for and secured investment for my individual art practice. My project started with the concept of vanua from a Fijian perspective – “Fijian interconnectedness inclusive of culture, chiefs, knowledge systems, relationships, values, land, and spiritualities” (Fijian Vanua Research Framework definition, here). I was and continue to be interested in the shifting dynamics of being Tangata Moana / Tangata Tiriti in Aotearoa and the comfort/discomfort of being an indigenous settler on land violated by ongoing colonial violence.

Through extensive talanoa with Kaliopate Tavola, my father and Head of Mataqali Navusalevu, the second Mataqali in Dravuni Village in Kadavu, Fiji, the project became anchored in a visual exploration of what is known as Lapita pottery. Like footprints of ancestors, this pottery practice maps time, space and connections across Oceania, its decorative patterning a kind of DNA for visual vocabularies we use to this day. This early exploration of Lapita pottery also coincided with a chance reconnection with Tonga-based artist Serene Tay; conversations about pottery, healing, gallery building and spirituality with Serene between Wellington and South Auckland were pivotal – I’m so thankful our paths crossed like they did.

The grant from Creative New Zealand offered me time and space to dive deeper and expand my thinking and experimental making. The gallery became a shared studio space, I returned to working with textiles and painting on loose canvas – approaches I had used as a young artist moving from Suva, Fiji to South Auckland. I’ve loved making work again, finding resolutions through assembling and mark-making, arriving at understanding through quiet contemplation.

I use the title ‘artist-curator’ as a nod to the Cook Islands curator, Jim Vivieaere (1947-2011), who was a mentor and groundbreaker for Moana Pacific curatorial practice. I’ve long asserted that my curatorial work is an extension of my visual arts practice, but this exhibition project has reminded me that curating is a collective, outward practice, creating an identity statement with many parts, and facilitating the ways and means that statement is delivered and received. Being an artist is, in my experience, deeply introspective, a practice of trying to understand where individual experience fits within a wider collective experience.

I’ve so enjoyed remembering the ‘artist’ part of being an artist-curator.

My solo exhibition, BACKBONE is a body of new paintings and textile assemblages.

*Racism is Tiring* (2023) | Textile assemblage | 900x1420mm

BACKBONE kicks off a season of solo shows at Vunilagi Vou here in East Tāmaki.

In late June, Papatoetoe-based painter, Niu Lemalu presents his second solo exhibition, Let’s Play Outide and in August, Ōtara-based interdisciplinary artist, Genevieve Pini presents her highly anticipated first solo, Muscle Memory.

Please help us to kick off a season of solos!

BACKBONE opens with a Private View / Opening on Thursday 27 April from 6-9pm and then runs until 10 June 2023.

Vunilagi Vou is open Thursday – Saturday from 10am – 2pm, and by appointment. Parking is available outside the main gate.

Vunilagi Vou is located at 14/15 Bishop Lenihan Place, East Tāmaki, South Auckland.

Uncategorised

Two Solos seeking investment via #BoostedxMoana

It’s high season for hustle!

Vunilagi Vou has the privilege of participating in the 2022 BoostedxMoana initiative delivered in partnership between Boosted – Aotearoa’s dedicated arts project crowdfunding platform backed by The Arts Foundation – and Creative New Zealand.

In 2020, 118 donors helped us raise over $12k to support exhibition delivery at Vunilagi Vou 2.0 and The Alexander Cafe. With the massive disruptions that the pandemic caused in 2021, that investment was a life-line and kept the cogs turning in and out of lockdown lulls. Those funds supported exhibitions by Vea and Emily Mafile’o, Antonio Filipo, David Garcia, Peatree and Jeremiah Tauamiti.

This year, working now from a beautiful new premises in East Tāmaki, South Auckland, and after a short hiatus in between spaces, it’s all go for 2023!

Our BoostedxMoana project is simply called Two Solos. It is a project to support, nurture and hold space for the development of two solo exhibitions by two South Auckland-based artists – Genevieve Pini and Niu Lemalu.

Whilst Genevieve has been practicing for almost two decades, and Niu for one, neither artist has ever applied for Creative New Zealand funding; their practices have been entirely self-funded. Both have mainly shown in South Auckland, and both work full-time in non-creative sector jobs.

Making a solo exhibition takes commitment, resource, encouragement and confidence. It takes people, perhaps a curator or gallerist, to see untapped potential in an artist, and in an ideal situation, support them to manifest an idea, refining it, shaping it and presenting it to an audience.

This crowdfunding effort centres the process of supported artistic development, and the nuanced space that is held between Moana Pacific artists, and a Moana Pacific curator, in a Moana Pacific gallery. Both Genevieve and Niu will develop their ideas with support, talanoa and guidance with the community of practice that surrounds Vunilagi Vou.

The time and space this Two Solos project funding will enable will allow both artists to see their work within a wider creative ecology. Their solo shows will be significant markers in their broader creative practices, that have the potential to move in new and exciting directions when supported in ways that are culturally, politically and socially informed.

We are looking to raise NZ$10,000 to support the development, material costs, gallery overheads and artist fees to produce these two solo exhibitions in 2023 and Creative New Zealand is committed to match funding up to $3,000.

Without operational funding in 2023, Vunilagi Vou’s curatorial programme will be made up of individually funded projects like this Two Solos project. There is a certain freedom to this in that the gallery can shapeshift to meet different needs. If funds are secured to support Niu and Genevieve’s solo shows, Vunilagi Vou could transform short-term into a working studio to meet the needs of much-needed space required to make and experiment, plan and think.

I’ve shared with Genevieve and Niu that this Two Solos project will be the fourth crowdfunding campaign I’ve led and the feeling of being backed by your community is like nothing else. Crowdfunding is hard work, and can be challenging for many reasons; you have to believe that your work is worth investment, and that’s why I’m here, holding space for these two artists, who have never seen applying for arts funding as an option. They are 100% worth the investment and I’ve seen that time and time again in the work they have produced for shows I’ve made over the years.

I am so excited to see them both keen and committed to making solo exhibitions in 2023. Your investment will have a powerful and transformative impact on two excellent artists with untapped potential – please do consider donating!

Our Two Solos crowdfunding campaign runs until Thursday 17 November 2022 – please help us spread the word, amplify the quiet excellence of these two artists and help Vunilagi Vou hold space for two awesome new shows in 2023!

Events, Exhibitions

VV x Alexander: Shapeshifting, new exhibitions and Ōtara

In June 2021, Vunilagi Vou will celebrate our second anniversary and shapeshift once again to operate from The Alexander Café, a new locally-owned eatery and cultural enterprise located on Alexander Crescent in Ōtara, South Auckland.

Having operated Vunilagi Vou 2.0 from the residential context of suburban Papatoetoe since October 2020, the opportunity arose to partner with The Alexander Café and create space for another local enterprise, Celebrate Aotearoa – a retail operation driven by local Tongan creative entrepreneur, Czarina Wilson.

Located in a refurbished semi-industrial warehouse, The Alexander Café has built a strong community and customer base from around the Auckland region; it is a hub of Māori and Pacific professionals, locals, gym goers and creatives, always abuzz with talanoa. For Vunilagi Vou, the café offers an opportunity to integrate excellent art into the South Auckland space, quietly informing our lives and discussions and enabling artwork to create interventions in the public consciousness, rather than asking the public to engage with arts environments.

Local Tongan creative entrepreneur, Czarina Wilson, has been part of the Vunilagi Vou mission since the beginning, offering retail guidance for our first premises in Ōtāhuhu, and partnering on a pop-up shop at the Ōtara Kai Village in September to raise funds for Vunilagi Vou’s post-Covid re-launch. Czarina has been operating her enterprise, Celebrate Aotearoa out of the Ōtara Kai Village Boutique since October 2020 and is excited to relocate just a stones throw away to The Alexander Café to partner with Vunilagi Vou once more!

From Saturday 12 June 2021, The Alexander Café’s mezzanine floor will house both Celebrate Aotearoa and the Vunilagi Vou office, and a suite of three new exhibitions will be on show throughout the building.

Video still from *Put Some Respect On My Name interview* with Samson Vaotu’ua; animation still by India Taberner

Put Some Respect on My Name is an exhibition project by Papatoetoe-based Sāmoan filmmaker Jeremiah Tauamiti (Malosi Pictures) produced with support from Creative New Zealand. At the centre of the work are nine individual stories exploring the meaning and mana of Pacific Island surnames, and the importance of correct pronunciation as an act of respect. The project incorporates interviews with Elizabeth Koroivulaono, Tanya Muagututi’a, Vela Manusaute, Te Amohaere Ngata-aerengamate, Raymond Sagapolutele, Benjamin Tamanikaiyaroi, Ema Tavola, Essendon Tu’itupou and Samson Vaotu’ua. The project also incorporates animation work by India Taberner and graphic design by Antonio Filipo.

Becoming is a body of recent work by Peatree, a mixed media artist currently based in Melbourne, Australia where they work predominantly across the mediums of illustration and sculpture. Completing undergraduate studies at Manukau School of Visual Arts in Ōtara in 2005, Peatree’s practice has absorbed influences from around the world informing their own evolving positionality in relation to gender, ethnicity and sexuality. Becoming is an exhibition of small paintings exploring the artist’s constantly evolving sense of self and commitment to “the inherent existential search”.

Killer of a Time is a body of work by Manurewa-based Tongan photographer Emily Mafile’o made in 2013/14. This body of work is part of the artist’s two decade-long documentary practice exploring the diversity of Tongan lives and experience in Aotearoa and Tonga. This vérité style sepia-toned series focuses on ‘Killer’, whose life at the time was deeply embedded in gang culture; it is an intimate observation of the freedoms, ties and violence that framed his life, woven together with glimpses of anga fakatonga (Tongan way). This work presents a challenging perspective of Tongan experience but actively broadens awareness of the ways Tongan identities evolve and adapt in response their environments.

All three exhibitions are open from Saturday 12 June and run until the end of July.

VV x Alexander is the beginning of a new chapter. A return to Ōtara, a cultural hotspot for Moana Oceania creative innovation, where Vunilagi Vou Curator-Director, Ema Tavola established her practice at Manukau School of Visual Arts and later as founding manager of Fresh Gallery Ōtara. As the third ‘re-birth’ of Vunilagi Vou, it is an evolved business model, shapeshifting from a commercial premise in Ōtāhuhu, to a residential setting in Papatoetoe, to a shared entrepreneurial hub in Ōtara. Third time lucky?!

Help us celebrate the launch of VV x Alexander

Come along and celebrate The Alexander Cafe’s newest tenants, Vunilagi Vou and Celebrate Aotearoa, and the opening of three exciting exhibitions, Put Some Respect On My Name, Becoming and Killer of a Time on Friday 11 June from 6pm.

We’re also launching Vunilagi Vou’s first publication, VV:Dua – The Story of Vunilagi Vou’s First Year, produced with support from Creative New Zealand. Copies will be available on the night and later stocked at Celebrate Aotearoa!

The Alexander Café is located at 4/100 Alexander Crescent, Ōtara, South Auckland; it is 5 minute drive from the Highbrook Drive or East Tamaki Road exits on State Highway 1 or a short walk from the Ōtara Bus Interchange (notably featuring design work by Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi).

The Alexander Café ground floor is wheelchair accessible with disability carparks directly outside the main entrance, the venue also has a wheelchair accessible toilet. Assistance dogs are also allowed onsite.

After the VV x Alexander launch, opening hours are as follows:

Monday – Friday: 7am – 3pm
Saturday: 8am – 2pm

Appointments can still be made to view and discuss the artwork on show, get in touch via the Appointments page here.